Wal-Mart
Announces New Supplier Incentives(Beyond Pesticides, November 1, 2006) On October
30, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. announced its latest campaign to develop a
greener business profile and reintroduce itself to customers alienated
by its business practices. The “Preferred Chemical Principles”
campaign will establish protocols for Wal-Mart’s suppliers to
report their chemical uses and voluntarily replace them with more sustainable
substances.

According to the
company’s press
release, it will work with suppliers to substitute 20 chemicals
of concern over two years. The Principles will “establish a clear
set of preferred chemical characteristics for product ingredients.”
To kick off the Principles, Wal-Mart will announce the first three chemicals
in its program at its Chemical Intensive Product Network’s (CIP)
Molecule-to-Molecule meeting. The CIP participates in the Environmental
Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment
Formulator Partnership.

The first three
chemicals are two pesticides, propoxur
and permethrin,
and a cleaning agent, nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE). Wal-Mart’s
plan for the voluntary phase-out of these chemicals by suppliers comes
in three steps:

1) Awareness –
where participating suppliers will be given a period to identify for
Wal-Mart any of their products that currently use one of the priority
chemicals as ingredients;

2) Development of an Action Plan – where suppliers communicate
to Wal-Mart their plans regarding the Priority Chemicals in their
products; and

3) Recognition and Reward – where Wal-Mart acknowledges the
suppliers who participate in this effort.

John Westling, senior
vice president and general merchandise manager, comments on the program,
“One of our environmental goals at Wal-Mart is to sell products
that sustain our resources and our environment . . . We anticipate that
our efforts will encourage our suppliers and their suppliers to innovate
new product formulations that will be better for our customers and for
the environment.”

The retail giant,
often regarded as the leading aggressor against local businesses and
one of the most powerful companies of its kind in the country, has found
itself often maligned for lack of employee benefits and huge volume
of resources used in its global operations, among other things. Its
latest efforts to reduce packaging and the toxicity of its products
have received some praise from environmental groups, albeit with reservation.

Lois Gibbs, executive
director for the Center
for Health, Environment and Justice issued a statement saying, “We
welcome Wal-Mart’s efforts to phase out highly hazardous chemicals
in consumer products. However, [we] urge Wal-Mart to expand the list
of priority chemicals to include PVC, set concrete timeframes and benchmarks,
and recognize that sustainability must include workers’ benefits
and wages both domestically and throughout the supply chain. Without
concrete benchmarks, any initiative is toothless.”

This latest announcement
comes on the heels of a series of promises by the company to reduce
its greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce solid waste from stores nationwide.
Watchdog group Wal-Mart
Watch says, “If Wal-Mart makes good on its promises to use
100% renewable energy and produce zero waste through its supply chain,
the positive effects on global warming, the use of toxic chemicals in
production and sustainable product sourcing could be tremendous.”